Of Two Minds (book)

Of Two Minds: The Revolutionary Science of Dual-Brain Psychology is a book written by the American psychiatrist Fredric Schiffer (MD degree in 1971) wherein he proposes that each person behaves as if there are two minds within the person, and that by recognizing and relating to the two separate minds, the therapist can promote healing and understanding of problems such as depression, anxiety, addictive behavior and delusional thoughts. The author writes that by "two minds in one person" he means that a "part of an individual ...has a unique set of memories, motivations, and behaviors alongside another part of him which has a different unique (though possibly similar) set of memories, motivations and behaviors." (Schiffer 2nd edition, 2021, p.30) The author locates a "mind" in each of the two physical halves (hemispheres) of the brain. and he "maintains that one hemisphere can be more immature than the other and that this imbalance leads to different mental disorders". During his counseling, as an exercise he has his patients cover all of one eye, and the inner half of the other eye, which the author feels selectively stimulates one cerebral hemisphere more than the other – activating the thoughts and feelings of that hemisphere – which allows one to "'talk' to each half of the brain separately, to learn which is less mature, and to bring the two hemispheres into harmony".